Imagine if someone took just the first 30 minutes of any PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movie and stretched it into an entire film. That is basically about all that amounts to a plot in this film and the pace at which it tells it. And at only an hour and 17 minutes you REALLY do feel every... single... minute... of it... slowly... passing...
It is astounding how so little happening can even fill up that runtime and then have it feel twice as long than it actually is. It isn't helped that the film progresses with only two modes:
1). Ambient spa music over a character quietly and slowly meandering around her house waiting for a jump scare, and 2). Two characters having a conversation while standing directly across from each other with no music or much of any background sounds at all.
It is boring. Plodding. And listless.
Nothing kinetic ever occurs, no physical conflicts, no physical interactions, no intimacy, no hurry to get somewhere, no running, no chasing, nothing with any real movement of any kind happens onscreen (aside from maybe a book someone tosses from off-camera).
The only action or conflict comes from people describing events we never get to see. I.e. Oh someone was killed? There was a gun? People were in a car and actually driving somewhere? (that is all from the climax BTW, just two people talking/describing stuff never shown in-film).
The few points of praise I'd give this is the look of the film is a huge improvement over the last thing I saw from this guy (some camgirl killer movie), so it gets points for the movie both looking and sounding professionally made. And the acting was largely just okay (save for the husband actor who seemed to be unfamiliar with general human behavior).
But that's it. How they figured this deserved a sequel is confounding.
===-=== -- MY RATING SCALE -- ===-===
- 1. Reserved for Poorly Produced/Amateur Video
- 2. Utterly Terrible
- 3. Really Bad
- 4. Mediocre
- 5. Perfectly Average
- 6. Surprisingly Entertaining
- 7. Very Good
- 8. Incredibly Good
- 9. Exceptionally Great
- 10. Reserved for my Personal Favorites.
